Uncooperative Crickets

Monday, July 30, 2007

Bye Bye, KG.

Second, I've had mixed feelings about an upcoming KG trade, but now that it appears to be happening, and I am pretty sad. KG has been great in Minnesota, and I will miss him.

Emotions aside, i think that it is a great deal for both teams. The Celtics are immediately championship contenders with Garnett, Pierce, and Allen. They should plow through the East, and might get lucky in the finals. The Wolves previously had no future, but now are looking pretty good. In two years, they could have a starting line-up of Al Jefferson, Craig Smith, Gerald Green, Corey Brewer, and Randy Foye. That team is big on potential, and could be fantastic. Through in Ratcliff's expiring contract and a couple of draft choices, and the Wolves have a healthy future.

On second reading, it appears that the trade has not yet been completed. However, it is looking like it might happen, and I will be sad when it does (even though it will be a good trade that will benefit my two favorite teams).

I cleaned and rearranged my office today. I will be grocery shopping and running tonight. If I have time, I might read and/or watch Arrested Development. My reading list is really getting pretty long.

I have comments on Arrested Development, Yacht Rock, and maybe my trip to Ithaca, but this will wait.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

I finished Harry Potter. I find that I am rarely happen with finales. Normally, my opinion is either "they screwed it up" or "they didn't screw it up." I think that Rowling falls in the latter category, which is the highest praise that I can give. Maybe Sports Night gets slightly higher praise; maybe Six Feet Under, too. I cannot remember how Arrested Development ended, but I don't think that they screwed it up. Same with Ed. In fact, Ed may have had one of the best endings ever, since it ended at exactly the right time. Now, Buffy had a great ending after season 5, but then got picked up for seasons 6 and 7 on the WB. The ending of season 7 was decent, but not great. I didn't finish watched the X-Files.

I finished teaching my summer class, and I loved it. I had some trouble making the class hard enough, but I think that now know some good questions to ask.

I'm off to Ithaca to write a textbook. I'm leaving in probably 15 minutes. I'm really excited because I am going to take my first Greyhound trip of my life. I want to travel by bus and train as much as possible now, due to environmental concerns. Of course, there are times when time constraints require air travel, but the summers should allow for frequent bus/rail trips. We will see if my opinion remains after this Ithaca trip.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Dirk Awesome: Great American

Issue one! Has America gone too far in its attempt to become independent from foreign oil?

Here is a side of the issue that I have never considered before. I'll still in favor of as high of fuel economy standards as is realistic. I think that we are about half-way there right now.

I just downloaded a ton of Daily Show/Colbert episodes from the fall that I never watched. I cherry-picked the ones with interesting guests, and now I need to march my way through them.

I am done with two (of three) weeks of teaching. My students just handed in a midterm, and I am going to spend the weekend grading and preparing for next week's topic (fractions!). I am hoping to have a lot of the grading done by the end of the day, although I don't think that that is actually going to happen.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Windmills

They finally found a vaccine for "brain cancer in Switzerland.". I believe that the vaccine causes a person to be transported to Austria immediately before the onset of brain cancer.

I don't know what this criminal was thinking, but apparently it helps to rob a bank dressed like this:

I would have to imagine his outfit was not quite as good.

I build windmills with Tango's owner yesterday. We build one that looked roughly like

, only it was made of cardboard and didn't work very well. The second one we made was a Savonius windmill and looked roughly like this:

This windmill zipped around its axis, and was able to lift a decent amount of weight. Finally, we made a simple two-blade windmill that looked like

This worked much better than the first three-blade design, but it didn't turn nearly as quickly as the Savonius design. However, it was able to lift a lot more weight than the Savonius, which I still can't quite figure out. Its two blades always turned slowly, but they seemed to turn at the same rate, regardless of how much weight it was lifting.

We are next going to see if we can attach the windmills to a generator to see if we can convert the mechanical power to electrical power.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

I volunteered today.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Thugs in MLB?

This is old news, but I am wondering why Michael Barrett hasn't gotten the "thug" label yet. He has been involved in fights with Roy Oswalt, A.J. Pierzynski, Carlos Zambrano, and Rich Hill (note that the last two were on the same team as Barrett at the time).

Has Barrett been labeled as a menace yet? Perhaps, but I haven't heard a lot about it. It seems like he is not being held to the same level of scrutiny as some NBA players - it seemed like Artest got labeled as a problem for doing much less than this. I would have to imagine that race factors into this, but I have no proof.

I finished my first week of teaching out of three. My students are great, and I am starting to feel good about the class. I was initially nervous about it because I hadn't though all the way through the course (even though I had taught it once before). Now I have some grading that I don't want to do.

I am superexcited because I got some hand-held crank generators today:

I am going to use it to get high school kids to build windmills out of junk.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Back Home

I returned home from a trip to 'Sota yesterday. Here are a handful of things on my mind:

This is awful. There is zero accountability in this government; I hope Congress provides some. You just cannot obstruct justice and get away with it. Sure, he still has to pay a hefty fine, but I am guessing that he can afford it (or else Cheney will pay it for him).

Speaking of which, aren't fines too regressive? Should we have a system where you pay a percentage of your wealth? Wouldn't Steve Forbes be behind that?

I am thrilled that the Wolves got Brewer and Richard. Brewer is going to be a solid player, and will be a great character guy. When he interviewed with ESPN, he had an ear-to-ear grin. Richard is enough of a bruiser that he has a chance of making the roster.

I saw a great 12 inning Twins game in Minnesota. It is thrilling to be in the crowd in a great game.